You actually might have a good point when you say "Yikes, talk about picking on the wrong group."
Multiple reasons, too. Some really funny, others pretty serious. First one, on a light note, you don't go within earshot of your dentist and say something like "I'm going to start charging my dentist for the time I'm spent waiting in the waiting room." Particularly if you have an upcoming appointment. And the dentist has a good memory. "Oh, did I say two root canals? I meant FIVE! Muahahahaha!" I'm sure they all have dentists. And god help them when they find out.
On the serious side, though, if I recall from my government classes, the AMA (American Medical Association) is one of the largest interest groups, and of course the ADA (Amer. Dental Assc) is pretty closely tied. Just a quick look on Opensecrets.org shows the ADA contributing $400k compared to the ~$800k of the RIAA. Of course the AMA has contributed over $20 MILLION as an all time high. (Open Secrets)
Something tells me that would be a BAD group for the RIAA to piss off.
Man, I keep picturing a high level recording industry exec in the dentist's office. I keep imagining him sitting there in the chair bragging about trying to make them pay for the music they have playing, then all of the sudden its a scene from "The Dentist." ( B horror film that was actually really freaking scary...)
You can really say all you want about Dell quality and such, but you'd be wrong.
You make it seem like you deal with a lot of people who have Dell's. Well, you don't. I do. Everyday.
Admittedly, I work for Dell. So the first thing someone is going to think is "Well of course you defend them, you work there!" Yeah, but you won't ever see a Dell touch my desk. I'm an Apple fanboy here. Ever since I was about three years old. I only work there cause its an easy job, decent pay, and I'm in school. There are a lot of things I dislike about Dell. Of course, being employed there, I won't go into it.
But I deal with many more Dell customers than you do. And I don't hear of any of the problems you're talking about. Of course I have all my college friends who have gotten Dell's. They don't have any problems either. Now, the ones that have Compaq's...well, I won't go there.
One of Dell's main focuses is customer retention. And they have industry high (And I'm talking consumer level) retention, over 50% last I heard. That's pretty good with goods approaching commodity status. You don't get that by selling products that fail in a year.
I hear from employees of companies that use Dell's, and most of them have three, four year old laptops that run perfectly for them. The Dell's certainly look better than most competitors products, but of course you'll laugh that off. Cause you know, looks don't matter, right Apple?
I think the difference here is that back then, you didn't have Windows. So it was DOS vs. MacOS. EASY win.
Now we have Windows. In my opinion, the Mac OS is a superior operating system, particularly with regards to useablity. BUT, with anything, it has a learning curve. Particularly if you're coming from Windows. Not because its hard to use, but because most people are used to Windows. Even though using a lot of the same concepts, its pretty unfamiliar, especially with OS X. I don't think 24 or 48 hours is enough. I have a buddy who came over to do some pair programming, and I'll always point out the cool features. He will admit Mac OS X is a better operating system, but is not willing to make the switch since it still has a learning curve.
Previously, there was no competition, since DOS was so user-unfriendly, and they were to completely different concepts.
It should be mentioned that they do offer the N-Series desktop, which is pretty much a barebones 2400 (Low end model) with nothing installed (blank hd) and a disk with FreeDOS on it. And this is available to just about anyone. Its a very lowend machine, but not a bad option.
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic. as px/featured_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s= dhs
[blockquote][i]When will the US see a version of Windows that is JUST an Operating System? I wouldn't even mind it if they included a separate disk with 'bundled' but optional software, like a music player, a photo album tool, and maybe some video editing software... heck for the good PCs they could even include some sort of DVD authoring tool. [/i][/blockquote]
I'm in the process of getting a BS in CS, but have never really had any experience with any kind of certification. So I saw the section at Barnes and Noble and decided to take a look. I found one of the few Cisco books that wasn't part of a package and it looked pretty tough. I haven't ever dealt with any of that before.
Then I proceeded to look at the A+ certification. After flipping through the book, I almost laughed. It seemed to me any normal person would pick half that stuff up just dealing with computers on a daily basis. Hell, it had tests on some of the Setup Wizards in Windows. That, to me, it pretty crazy. The only hard seeming part was it actually had questions on what options were shown in this particular pane of the Wizard in this particular situation. Why the hell do I care? I can read it when I come to it.
Now please, if I'm missing something, inform me. That I'm almost willing to shell out the cash and go for my A+ cert without looking through the review guides or whatever.
I know there are a lot of people on here who think that most of these case mods are overdone, and don't think highly of any modifying.
But you know what, I don't care what you think, this thing took a lot of effort and I think surpasses the point where its more art than just being cool or hip. If you think otherwise....I don't know what to say.
Actually, I saw this article and figured I could rant a little. I really am not impressed by it. I get 200 or so junk mail every week, and about a quarter of that gets through. And some of these to me seem really obvious. It doesn't really seem to learn anymore either. I've never had a false positive, which is pretty good, but I'd still love to find a way to implement a Bayesian filter in Mail.
I suck at grammar, so I wouldn't know if it was correct or not, but any English teacher I ever had would have told me to rewrite that. And this being in a paper thats supposed to sound intelligent, much less the news.
Great...I'm half way through 29 comments, and this is the second person modded up for mocking the "hacker speech". Apparently the easy road to good karma on here is mocking someone using very clichéd jokes or posting links to other articles that might be related, but aren't.
At least he wasn't modded up for being insightful, with his wonderful little rant that makes some oh so great points...
Re:Look into something more sophisticated...
on
Build Your Own Steadicam
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I've built one of these too, and all things being equal, I think you would be better off spending $120 to get one of the Steady cam clones. True, he has some cool shots on his page but those are not nearly as easy as he makes it out to be. Maybe I am just clumsy.
I can kinda understand where you're coming from, but honestly, it kind of erks me. And I've started seeing quite a few of these in this article. This guy spent $14 and maybe thirty minutes to an hour learning how to get the thing to work well, and yet for some reason paying nine times as much and also taking some time to learn to use it seems like a better idea?
Maybe if you can afford it. I'm a poor college kid who has several expensive hobbies. What you are saying is, I would be better off taking my car to a car audio store and having them install my stereo system for me, at the cost of $300 or so. That or I can do it myself, take a few days longer, for $40, and maybe not look quite as good. In my case I thought it was pretty damned close, and even though it took me a lot longer, I got the satisfaction of doing it myself. Thats the key thing here, I think, that most people miss.
He improvised, saved some money, and made a pretty good gadget himself. Decent accomplishment even if it isn't as good as something that costs nine times more. And thats just the cheap one, right?
Now, as far as him trying to make money off of it, I might see where you could complain about that. I think I would in his case too, but I don't think that would bother me as much.
You've never actually lived in Austin. The cost of living is NOT cheap, particularly when you factor in the amount of traffic for a city of its size, and the cost of living in other areas.
They made a HUGE mistake...letting OTHER companies ride their wave...Cause supporting Real would sell SO many more iPods, and certainly not cut into their profits.
Now how do these people get quoted by anyone who has some degree of sense?
I have to disagree with most people on here. Because of the nature of most workplaces, you either can't or are not permitted to get personal phone calls on the actual office phone. This policy was about to be implemented in a place I used to work, and I was ready to refuse to obey it, simply because my cell phone is how my family and friends get a hold of me, whether its just to talk or an emergency. If I can't receive phone calls on my work phone, and somone has to get a hold of me immediately, I have to have my cell phone. I won't answer it, and it is ALWAYS on silent if I'm in school or at work, but I will take a quick break to check a voice mail message. It won't disrupt anyone or interfere with my work. It takes 30 seconds, and could be a big deal.
I hate cellphones as much as everyone, particularly when they ring during class. But I'm always going to have mine on me, on silent, in case of an emergency.
What the hell happened to them? You know, when you used to download a program off of FTP or Firstclass, forgot to scan it for viruses, installed it, had your harddrive wiped clean. And then you had to reinstall from your backup floppies, and had no one to blame but your own stupid self?
Now its not your fault, and it hurts you as well as everyone else!
Actually, SSRI's help prolong the high, since it keeps the serotonin from being reabsorbed by the neurons. It also helps prevent the reuptake of another serotonin like substance, forgot what it is called (starts with an m, maybe?) which is what harms the neurons. And there is NO substantial proof the harm to the neurons is permanent.
Slashdot Mirror
You actually might have a good point when you say "Yikes, talk about picking on the wrong group."
Multiple reasons, too. Some really funny, others pretty serious. First one, on a light note, you don't go within earshot of your dentist and say something like "I'm going to start charging my dentist for the time I'm spent waiting in the waiting room." Particularly if you have an upcoming appointment. And the dentist has a good memory. "Oh, did I say two root canals? I meant FIVE! Muahahahaha!" I'm sure they all have dentists. And god help them when they find out.
On the serious side, though, if I recall from my government classes, the AMA (American Medical Association) is one of the largest interest groups, and of course the ADA (Amer. Dental Assc) is pretty closely tied. Just a quick look on Opensecrets.org shows the ADA contributing $400k compared to the ~$800k of the RIAA. Of course the AMA has contributed over $20 MILLION as an all time high. (Open Secrets)
Something tells me that would be a BAD group for the RIAA to piss off.
Man, I keep picturing a high level recording industry exec in the dentist's office. I keep imagining him sitting there in the chair bragging about trying to make them pay for the music they have playing, then all of the sudden its a scene from "The Dentist." ( B horror film that was actually really freaking scary...)
Blake
Canon makes the actual print engines inside most HP printers.
You're right, you should choose your battles carefully!
There's a bit of a difference between 1.8 Ghz Celeron notebooks and 1.8 Ghz Pentium M processors.
Dell doesn't offer a 1.8 Ghz laptop with a Celeron processor. What you were looking at is this:
Dell
Go look on Pricewatch:
1.8 Ghz Celeron Notebooks starting at $800.
1.8 Ghz Pentium M Notebooks starting at $1700.
Where are my mod points when I'm forced to defend a company I don't particularly care for against trolls...?
Ibanez
You can really say all you want about Dell quality and such, but you'd be wrong.
You make it seem like you deal with a lot of people who have Dell's. Well, you don't. I do. Everyday.
Admittedly, I work for Dell. So the first thing someone is going to think is "Well of course you defend them, you work there!" Yeah, but you won't ever see a Dell touch my desk. I'm an Apple fanboy here. Ever since I was about three years old. I only work there cause its an easy job, decent pay, and I'm in school. There are a lot of things I dislike about Dell. Of course, being employed there, I won't go into it.
But I deal with many more Dell customers than you do. And I don't hear of any of the problems you're talking about. Of course I have all my college friends who have gotten Dell's. They don't have any problems either. Now, the ones that have Compaq's...well, I won't go there.
One of Dell's main focuses is customer retention. And they have industry high (And I'm talking consumer level) retention, over 50% last I heard. That's pretty good with goods approaching commodity status. You don't get that by selling products that fail in a year.
I hear from employees of companies that use Dell's, and most of them have three, four year old laptops that run perfectly for them. The Dell's certainly look better than most competitors products, but of course you'll laugh that off. Cause you know, looks don't matter, right Apple?
Ibanez
I've never actually been to one of these, and being in Austin figured I might go, or get someone to go for me.
Whats the procedure for bidding? Is any of this stuff actually worth bidding on, and do they actually go for decent prices?
Blake
I think the difference here is that back then, you didn't have Windows. So it was DOS vs. MacOS. EASY win.
Now we have Windows. In my opinion, the Mac OS is a superior operating system, particularly with regards to useablity. BUT, with anything, it has a learning curve. Particularly if you're coming from Windows. Not because its hard to use, but because most people are used to Windows. Even though using a lot of the same concepts, its pretty unfamiliar, especially with OS X. I don't think 24 or 48 hours is enough. I have a buddy who came over to do some pair programming, and I'll always point out the cool features. He will admit Mac OS X is a better operating system, but is not willing to make the switch since it still has a learning curve.
Previously, there was no competition, since DOS was so user-unfriendly, and they were to completely different concepts.
Blake
It should be mentioned that they do offer the N-Series desktop, which is pretty much a barebones 2400 (Low end model) with nothing installed (blank hd) and a disk with FreeDOS on it. And this is available to just about anyone. Its a very lowend machine, but not a bad option.
. as px/featured_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s= dhs
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic
Blake
[blockquote][i]When will the US see a version of Windows that is JUST an Operating System? I wouldn't even mind it if they included a separate disk with 'bundled' but optional software, like a music player, a photo album tool, and maybe some video editing software... heck for the good PCs they could even include some sort of DVD authoring tool. [/i][/blockquote]
Wait! Sounds familiar...Ah thats it...Mac OS X...
Apparently, not only does THIS guy not get the joke, neither do the moderators...
Maybe thats a good thing, actually...
Blake
Cause YOU know how much energy each of those weapons would draw compared to a reactor that would fit on the ship?
Right.
Well, DUH...it is Red Hat certification. I can't imagine Red Hat would focus too much on teaching people how to use OTHER distros.
I'm in the process of getting a BS in CS, but have never really had any experience with any kind of certification. So I saw the section at Barnes and Noble and decided to take a look. I found one of the few Cisco books that wasn't part of a package and it looked pretty tough. I haven't ever dealt with any of that before.
Then I proceeded to look at the A+ certification. After flipping through the book, I almost laughed. It seemed to me any normal person would pick half that stuff up just dealing with computers on a daily basis. Hell, it had tests on some of the Setup Wizards in Windows. That, to me, it pretty crazy. The only hard seeming part was it actually had questions on what options were shown in this particular pane of the Wizard in this particular situation. Why the hell do I care? I can read it when I come to it.
Now please, if I'm missing something, inform me. That I'm almost willing to shell out the cash and go for my A+ cert without looking through the review guides or whatever.
Blake
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/15/124424 8&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=172
Somethings NEVER change!
Blake
I know there are a lot of people on here who think that most of these case mods are overdone, and don't think highly of any modifying.
But you know what, I don't care what you think, this thing took a lot of effort and I think surpasses the point where its more art than just being cool or hip. If you think otherwise....I don't know what to say.
Blake
No, that is a successful INSTALL, but an unsuccessful emulator...
Actually, I saw this article and figured I could rant a little. I really am not impressed by it. I get 200 or so junk mail every week, and about a quarter of that gets through. And some of these to me seem really obvious. It doesn't really seem to learn anymore either. I've never had a false positive, which is pretty good, but I'd still love to find a way to implement a Bayesian filter in Mail.
Blake
I suck at grammar, so I wouldn't know if it was correct or not, but any English teacher I ever had would have told me to rewrite that. And this being in a paper thats supposed to sound intelligent, much less the news.
Blake
Great...I'm half way through 29 comments, and this is the second person modded up for mocking the "hacker speech". Apparently the easy road to good karma on here is mocking someone using very clichéd jokes or posting links to other articles that might be related, but aren't.
At least he wasn't modded up for being insightful, with his wonderful little rant that makes some oh so great points...
I can kinda understand where you're coming from, but honestly, it kind of erks me. And I've started seeing quite a few of these in this article. This guy spent $14 and maybe thirty minutes to an hour learning how to get the thing to work well, and yet for some reason paying nine times as much and also taking some time to learn to use it seems like a better idea?
Maybe if you can afford it. I'm a poor college kid who has several expensive hobbies. What you are saying is, I would be better off taking my car to a car audio store and having them install my stereo system for me, at the cost of $300 or so. That or I can do it myself, take a few days longer, for $40, and maybe not look quite as good. In my case I thought it was pretty damned close, and even though it took me a lot longer, I got the satisfaction of doing it myself. Thats the key thing here, I think, that most people miss.
He improvised, saved some money, and made a pretty good gadget himself. Decent accomplishment even if it isn't as good as something that costs nine times more. And thats just the cheap one, right?
Now, as far as him trying to make money off of it, I might see where you could complain about that. I think I would in his case too, but I don't think that would bother me as much.
How? I thought you could do ANYTHING with duct tape?
Some of my friends cling to the notion that the two greatest things in this world are duct tape and Gold Bond.
Blake
You've never actually lived in Austin. The cost of living is NOT cheap, particularly when you factor in the amount of traffic for a city of its size, and the cost of living in other areas.
Blake
They made a HUGE mistake...letting OTHER companies ride their wave...Cause supporting Real would sell SO many more iPods, and certainly not cut into their profits.
Now how do these people get quoted by anyone who has some degree of sense?
Blake
I have to disagree with most people on here. Because of the nature of most workplaces, you either can't or are not permitted to get personal phone calls on the actual office phone. This policy was about to be implemented in a place I used to work, and I was ready to refuse to obey it, simply because my cell phone is how my family and friends get a hold of me, whether its just to talk or an emergency. If I can't receive phone calls on my work phone, and somone has to get a hold of me immediately, I have to have my cell phone. I won't answer it, and it is ALWAYS on silent if I'm in school or at work, but I will take a quick break to check a voice mail message. It won't disrupt anyone or interfere with my work. It takes 30 seconds, and could be a big deal.
I hate cellphones as much as everyone, particularly when they ring during class. But I'm always going to have mine on me, on silent, in case of an emergency.
Blake
What the hell happened to them? You know, when you used to download a program off of FTP or Firstclass, forgot to scan it for viruses, installed it, had your harddrive wiped clean. And then you had to reinstall from your backup floppies, and had no one to blame but your own stupid self?
Now its not your fault, and it hurts you as well as everyone else!
Actually, SSRI's help prolong the high, since it keeps the serotonin from being reabsorbed by the neurons. It also helps prevent the reuptake of another serotonin like substance, forgot what it is called (starts with an m, maybe?) which is what harms the neurons. And there is NO substantial proof the harm to the neurons is permanent.
Blake